Defiance (The Protectors #9)(53)

“I don’t know,” Everett said with a sigh, and then he was turning off the stove and reaching for the coffee pot. “He just said he had some place to be and that if he wasn’t back tonight, to take you back to my house with me. It isn’t like this place,” Everett said as he waved his hand in the air. “But Nash can call in some more agents if needed.”

The fucking bastard had left me.

And I knew exactly why.

All that shit he’d spouted about me being an equal participant…

Anger went through me and I was half-tempted to chuck the mug Everett slid in my direction against the wall. Right after the fury came the stark fear. What if the guy who’d tried to kill me got the drop on Vincent somehow?

“Call him,” I said.

“He won’t answer,” Everett said as he filled his mug with coffee. “I already tried.”

I didn’t know what that meant, nor did I care. But I could tell Everett wasn’t exactly thrilled with the circumstances.

“Bastard,” I muttered. “Not you,” I said as I glanced up at Everett.

Everett smiled and then went to fill my mug. “That he is.”

I put my hand over the top of the mug before he could pour and Everett immediately pulled back. “You said he won’t answer, right?” I asked.

Everett shook his head. “When he’s working…”

I nodded in understanding. I glanced at the watch on my wrist and then quickly took it off. “You might want to go home, Mr. President,” I said as I put the watch on the counter and then reached for the mug.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t,” he said with a smile, and then he leaned back and put the coffee pot down. He grabbed his own mug and took a sip as I proceeded to use my mug to pound the watch into oblivion. Once both it and the mug were destroyed, I went around the island and got a new mug. “Looks good,” I said as I looked at the food Everett had been cooking.

Everett chuckled and said, “I think you’ll do fine, Nathan Wilder. I think you’ll do just fine.”



“Ignore it,” Everett said for the third time to Nash as his phone began ringing. The man had declined to join us for breakfast, though I’d been the one to extend the invitation, not Everett. I had the clear feeling that Everett and his Secret Service agent were at odds, but for whatever reason, Everett hadn’t fired the man after yesterday’s fiasco.

Nash’s phone went silent and Everett’s began to vibrate again. He’d turned it to silent after the first three times Vincent had called, and he’d resorted to turning it over on the table so he wouldn’t have to read the texts that kept pinging on the phone. After smashing the watch, I’d used a chair to reach the singular security camera in the kitchen and had tossed a dishtowel over the thing. I figured if we didn’t move around, whatever motion detectors Vincent had in the house wouldn’t alert him to our presence. I knew I was courting trouble, but I didn’t give a shit. Vincent might have a lot to say to me when he got back, but he was going to get an earful, too.

“Did you ever meet my father?” I asked Everett as I pushed my plate away from me. Despite my certainty that I’d done the right thing, knowing I was going to be confronting a very angry Vincent soon had my appetite diminishing.

“Once,” Everett said. “The White House was hosting this event honoring a young solider who’d been killed saving his unit from an ambush attack. Your father was invited because the young man had been from South Carolina.”

I nodded. “Private First Class Geoffrey Waters,” I said.

“Yeah,” Everett said sadly. “We were honoring him posthumously with the Medal of Honor.”

I felt sick to my stomach because I knew very well what my father had done at that event. After the service had ended, he’d gone to the young man’s family to thank them for their sacrifice and then had proceeded to ask if their son, who’d been rumored to have been gay, had sought absolution before his death so he’d get to sit at his heavenly father’s side in the afterlife. While my father had left the event when he’d politely been asked to do so, he’d used the cameras of the reporters waiting outside to suggest that the young soldier would still be alive if he’d followed the path of God.

It was the first time I’d questioned my father…and my faith. I just hadn’t had the guts to go against him, and when he’d gotten home that night crowing about his success, Brody and I had both sat on the couch, silent as church mice as we’d listened to our father call it a victory for good Christians. A few months later, Brody had come out to me, and I’d gone running to my father to tell him his own son had been possessed by the lure of the devil.

“Can I ask you what made you do it, son?” Everett asked.

I flinched because my first thought was that he was talking about what I’d done to Brody. But then he said, “What made you switch sides?”

I had the stock answer on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t give voice to it.

Because it just wasn’t true anymore, no matter how hard I’d worked to convince myself I’d done what I had for Brody and others like him.

I met Everett’s eyes. “Because I’m gay.”

It was the last thing he expected me to say. That much was clear.

I’d expected the words to be harder to get out, but it was surprisingly easy, and the fact that Nash would have been able to hear the admission didn’t bother me in the least. Vincent had most definitely broken something inside of me, but in the best way. He’d broken something that had healed wrong after all those years of pretending I’d done the right thing by Brody when I’d betrayed him.